Poetry News

Mixed Pell-Mell: Doubts Cast on W.B. Yeats Remains

Originally Published: July 21, 2015

In other exhumation news... Turns out the remains of W.B. Yeats may not (wholly?) be those interred in the shadow of Ben Bulben in Co Sligo. The Guardian reports on the possible mix up:

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall may have paid homage to the graveside of WB Yeats during their historic royal tour of Ireland last month, but now fresh doubts are being cast on whether or not the remains in the earth at Drumcliffe parish in Co Sligo actually belong to the Irish poet.

Yeats’s last wish before his death in France in 1939 was to be buried back in his beloved Co Sligo, which inspired so many of his poems. However, the poet wasn’t brought back to Ireland until 1948 owing to the second world war.

Now French official documents suggest the Nobel laureate’s remains may have been mixed up with others’ in France before exhumation.

The Irish Times reported on Saturday that French doubts over bones and remains are contained in personal correspondence between diplomats in Paris who were involved in the repatriation. This documentation was handed over to the Irish embassy in Paris last month, according to thenewspaper.

The story goes on to report that the documents recently transferred to the Irish government suggest Yeats's remains may have been mixed with others while in France:

The Irish Times reported that the documents were found in the personal papers of the former French foreign ministry official Jacques Camille Paris, who later became the first secretary general of the Council of Europe. The newspaper said the diplomat’s son, Daniel Paris, gave the documents to the embassy in a discreet ceremony last month.

One of the documents the paper has seen states that French diplomats believed Yeats’s remains were “mixed pell-mell with other bones”.

We're sure to hear more about this in the coming months. Until then, read on at the Guardian.